


rise to me

by thisstableground



Series: Main Timeline ITH Fics [1]
Category: In the Heights - Miranda
Genre: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Autism, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-06 10:19:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15192683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisstableground/pseuds/thisstableground
Summary: Eight-year-old Usnavi doesn't really mind that he can't write very well, or that he gets distracted easy, or that he talks a lot, at least not until the rest of the world starts acting like it's a problem.[a.k.a, just a lil neurodivergent boy trying to live his best life.][2000-2001]





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [okay! so if you’re over in the DNH/ITH fandom with me you’ll know i’ve been writing usnavi as autistic-adhd with some learning difficulties pretty much from jump, and this has always been the backstory i’ve imagined/referenced for him, but i’ve never quite got round to writing it up proper until now. as is standard for me, it got out of hand in the wordcount area, so i'm splitting it into chapters.
> 
> please bear in mind that this is taking place in like, 2000 so things were a bit different on the attitudes to neurodiversity front.
> 
> see the end notes for warnings, though nothing too intense.]

Usnavi gets on well with nearly everyone. If you ask most of the kids in third grade they’ll say he’s fun, and if you ask the customers at the bodega they say he takes after both his parents which he considers to be a huge compliment. He likes smiling, and making other people smile, and sometimes he tries too hard or talks too much or forgets he’s having a conversation with you halfway through a sentence, but he’s got a good heart, everyone says.

Usnavi gets on with nearly everyone but he doesn’t, as such, have his _own_ group of friends. He’s spent his school life so far drifting from clique to clique, spends a month or two at a time and then moves on. There’s just not really anyone he’s clicked with. Cliqued with. It’s like if you tried to put the Pringles tubes on the shelf with all the boxes of cereal at the store: he fits, but the other kids are rectangle boxes that stack perfectly together at the corners in their little groups. Usnavi is round at the edges. There’s always room for him but he doesn’t tesselate properly within the space.

Recently, he’s been hanging out with Stevie and Lucas who used to be part of the crowd who hang out over in the far corner of the yard nearest the fence during recess, but the two of them splintered off after some big argument about something. Apparently that means an Usnavi-shaped vacancy has opened up, because one day at recess Lucas says “you’re part of _our_ group now, so you gotta hang out with us every day”.

They don’t really ask him if he wants to be. But he’s always wanted to have Specific Friends, so he goes along with it. It’s good. He doesn’t always like the games they play but he likes feeling like he belongs to something.

A few weeks later there’s a new kid at school, and he somehow ends up hanging out with them too. That works for Usnavi. Four is a good number, and being new must be scary, and Benny Roberts seems chill. 

The word Usnavi would use to describe him is big: Benny is very tall and he has big oversized t-shirts, a big oversized smile, big curly hair. Usnavi has always been tiny. His Mamá says it’s because he was born a month early and hasn’t caught up with himself yet. His Pai says he came out a month early because he’s always in a rush, and that all De la Vega boys are small even when they are, quote, "fully cooked". Usnavi says he just wishes people would stop thinking that he’s six when he’s clearly eight years old. Benny looks like he could be ten or even eleven, which is unfair, but his hair is _really cool_ , and Usnavi tells Benny all of this while the four of them are sitting under a tree in the park one Saturday.

“Thanks, dude,” Benny says, with the mildly concussed look many people get when they’re still getting used to how Usnavi talks. “So like. What do y’all do for fun around here?”

“I dunno,” Lucas says. “Hang out here. Go to the store. Make Usnavi do stuff.”

“Huh?” Benny says. “Like what stuff?”

“Oh, it’s really funny,” Stevie says. “So like last week I told him to eat some paper and he just like, _did_ it?”

They talk about Usnavi a lot as thought he can’t really hear them. Then again, sometimes he really doesn’t hear what people say even if it isn't too loud around them, as if the sounds fall out of his ears before they get far enough in to turn into words, so probably that’s why but it’s a little weird to listen to when he _can_ hear them.

Benny looks bewildered. “Why?” he asks Usnavi.

“‘Cause he told me to?” Usnavi says. Story explains itself, surely.

Benny turns to Stevie. “Why?”

“He does anything you tell him,” Stevie says. “For real. Try it. Tell him to… climb that tree.”

Benny still looks confused but he says, “aite. Usnavi, climb that tree.”

Usnavi turns to look at the tree. “It seems kinda high up?”

“Nah, it’ll be fine,” Lucas says confidently. “Trust us. We’re your friends, right?”

“Okay,” Usnavi says agreeably, and springs to his feet. Benny and Lucas give him a boost to the first branch and then he’s on his own. He climbs a few feet upwards with sound of the other three laughing from the ground. Not really sure what’s funny but it means they’re all having a good time so no worries, and then he hears Benny say, “uh, actually, I don’t think —“ at almost the exact same moment that Usnavi misses a foothold. The shock of slipping makes him let go of the branch above him too.

_Oh, oops,_ he thinks, which is a really inane last thought to have as he plummets to his certain demise, but in the end it turns out to just be a plummet towards a loud cracking sound and a searing pain in his right wrist.

He rolls onto his back clutching his arm, too winded to yell but not too winded to wheeze out “hijo de _puta_ holy crap ow” and is very glad Abuela Claudia isn’t here to hear it because she has strong opinions about eight year olds who “cuss like a sailor”. He always tells her he can’t help sounding like a sailor since he was named for a boat, after all, and she tells him with a smile that he’s too much like his father. 

The pain tugs him insistently back from a daze into real life where Lucas is repeating “shit shit shit”, keeping what is actually a pretty solid rhythm with Benny who is kneeling next to Usnavi chanting “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry”. Usnavi contemplates adding a kickdrum sound in there for balance to add some depth on all this high-pitched sibilance but since he’s currently in literal agony he settles for just saying “aaaaaghh” instead.

Stevie tugs Benny’s arm. “Leave him, we gotta go!”

“What? Are you crazy? He just fell out of a _tree_!”

“He’s fine, we’re gonna get in so much trouble if we stick around!”

“He ain't fine, look at his wrist, it’s gone all weird!”

“Aaaaghgh,” Usnavi interjects, to make sure everyone’s up to speed on his current situation and mood.

“Forget them,” Lucas says to Stevie, and the two of them run off.

“Assholes!” Benny yells after them. “I’m sorry, man, I shouldn’ta played along, they’re jerks. You’re gonna be okay. I’m really sorry, I’ll get help.”

“But you’ll get in trouble,” Usnavi gasps. He wishes Abuela _was_ here, cussing or no. This _hurts._

“What else is new?” Benny says, standing up and waving both arms, though people are already running their direction having realized what just happened. “YO! HELP! MY BUDDY’S HURT! DON’T JUST STAND AROUND, DO SOMETHIN'.”

Usnavi hazily decides that Benny is his favorite, right before he passes out.

***

Much later, when Usnavi’s wrist is in a cast and his Pai is taking a very subdued and apologetic Benny home to have a talk with his mom, Usnavi’s own mother sits him down in their living room.

“You’re lucky you landed on the grass and not concrete,” she says severely, and he nods. “I suppose we should be glad you’re left-handed.”

“Aw, so that means I still gotta write my English homework?” he asks, and Mamá gives him a look that he can’t interpret. “Lo siento,” he mutters, because it seems like a safe bet to apologize. “¿Estás enojado conmigo?”

“No contigo,” she says, but her voice hits off-pitch by a fraction too sharp so if she’s not mad at him she still sounds it. “Benny told us that you climbed the tree because him and the other boys told you to. Apparently Stevie said they tell you to do lots of things.”

“Well, yeah,” he says. Duh. What else would he do? “We’re playin'.”

“Playing how?”

“Pues,” he says slowly, “last week, Stevie told me to eat some grass so I could tell him what it tasted like. And paper. And Lucas told me to lick a Sharpie to see if it made my tongue black so I guess mostly it’s eatin' stuff? Or that time I came home all gross and you asked if I’d been playin' in trash, that was ‘cause they told me to climb into a dumpster but they said part of the game is I ain’t s’posed to tell anyone, so don’t tell them I told.”

Mamá makes a weird spasmy face like she just accidentally swallowed a bug. “They didn’t want you to tell because they knew it was dangerous and they shouldn’t have done it.You could've got cut on something sharp in the dumpster, and putting things in your mouth might make you sick. I don't think I need to tell you about the problem with the tree. Do _you_ like it when you play games like that?”

“No mucho,” he says. “Well, the grass was okay. The Sharpie and the dumpster sucked, and the tree hurt. Pero, they’re my friends so,” he shrugs, _that’s the way of the world._

“They are _not_ your friends, they’re —“ she cuts herself off, does a movement with her hands like she’s smoothing out an invisible sheet in front of her and starts again more calmly. “Usnavi, mean people sometimes pretend to be nice when they want you to do something for them. Even if it means you might get hurt. Or sometimes because they _want_ to hurt you.”

“Oh,” Usnavi says. He thinks it over. “Is this like when sometimes I’m talkin' to people out front of the store and Pai comes out and yells at them to go away even if they’re just like tellin' me about their cool dog and he says I gotta stop doing that without an adult around because I ‘ _don’t know people’s true intentions’?_ ”

He’s never really known _exactly_ what that meant but it feels like a similar thing. He does his best deep-voiced Pai impression because usually it makes Mamá laugh. She just folds her arms and inhales slowly through her nose.

“Are you mad?” he asks again, tucking the neckline of his t-shirt into his mouth so he can chew on it, then spitting it out because he was just told _not_ to put things in his mouth, then finding it somehow instantly makes its way back up there.

“Not at you,” Mamá says again. “Sí, it’s a bit like that. You shouldn’t ever feel like you have to do things that make you feel bad just because someone else says you should, even if they seem like a nice person. And if they still try to make you, that's when you come tell me, and I promise I'll help and not get mad.”

“Mffkaaay,” he says around his shirt. “Bleh. But so why do they do that stuff then?”

“Pequeño, if we had an answer for that the world would be a much better place,” she says. “I’m going to talk to their parents later, but I don’t want you to hang out with Stevie and Lucas any more. I know you have other friends who treat you better.”

“De acuerdo,” Usnavi says, shrugging. He’s not too cut up about it: they ditched him, and anyway he’d rather avoid breaking any more bones, he’s only got so many wrists going spare. “What about Benny? He said to climb it too, but then he stayed with me and helped.“

“Ah,” Mamá says. “Pues, some people are good people but they don’t think things through before they act. Which seems to be your new friend Benny’s problem. And your problem too. So as long as you both try and use your heads a bit more, Benny seems like a good boy to be friends with.”

“How am I s‘posed to tell the difference?”

“A ver…if you tell someone you don’t like something, a good person will apologize and stop doing it. They won’t leave you when you need help, either.”

Usnavi mulls all this over. It’s been a very long day and he’s very tired and his wrist is itchy under the cast. 

“People are _difficult_ ,” he concludes, heaving a sigh that puffs upwards into his bangs.

***

People _are_ difficult. And apparently they can be bad without it being immediately obvious, which is a revelation that’s shaken Usnavi’s small world right to the core: he always assumed he’d be able to tell. Your perspective on things really changes once you’ve fallen out of a tree.

It’s so complicated. Most everyone _seems_ to be nice and he doesn’t really know how to tell if they’re just lying no matter how hard he tries to puzzle them out. In the end, he decides to just like everyone until given a reason not to, same as always. If he gets to know everyone he meets he’ll eventually be able to tell what they’re _really_ like, and he’ll make more friends along the way, proper friends like Benny who has declared them best buds Officially and who hangs out with him every single day and knows a lot of great songs. But he also won’t climb any trees and if a stranger tells him they’ve got a cool dog he won’t ask them if he can go see it but he might pet it if it’s already there. He tells this plan to Mamá and she seems both approving and relieved.

There’s a secret to getting to know people even if you find it hard. He wonders when everyone else was taught the secret: for Usnavi, it was on his seventh birthday when his dad made him his first ever half a cup of coffee. Pai says that it's a De la Vega tradition, and that it’s important for Usnavi to learn what good coffee is because if you know someone’s coffee order you know who they are as a person. Like Pai knows Usnavi, so he knew even before Usnavi tried it for the first time that he would drink his light and sweet.

After the tree incident, Usnavi applies himself with all the energy his skinny little body can muster to really live this advice. He sits on the bodega counter as the regulars come in, observes three or four times to make sure he knows their patterns, repeating them in his head, and when he’s confident with it he starts repeating their order before they ask for anything for themselves to see if he got it right. People seem to find this entertaining. Mamá and Pai fall about laughing at Usnavi’s accented _one cream, five sugars, and a_ ** _winning_** _lottery ticket today, por favor._ Kevin Rosario raises his eyebrows, amused.

“It’s easier to remember if I do the voices too,” Usnavi explains.

“Muy impressive,” Kevin says. “Mateo, I didn’t know you had a parakeet for a son.”

“I ain’t a parakeet,” Usnavi says, offended. “I’m  _Dominican_.”

He doesn’t get why they all laugh even harder at that, but he likes it when he makes people happy. He’s good at it, somehow, though he still doesn’t really understand how.

“So you remember everyone’s groceries perfectamente but I got another call from school saying you forgot to bring in your homework again when I know I reminded you this morning, hm?” Pai says after Kevin leaves. “I think your brain is so full of coffee orders you can’t fit anything else in there.”

He picks Usnavi up and tips him upside down, shaking gently like he’s trying to empty his thoughts out onto the floor. Usnavi shrieks with delight.

“Mateo, his arm,” Mamá warns.

“You said it’s _important_ to remember coffee,” Usnavi says breathlessly, when he’s back right side up.

“Yes, but school is also important. Tienes que priorizar, mi chiquito,” Pai says.

Usnavi already _does_ prioritize. Pai is right: Usnavi only has a finite amount of space in his head so he has to choose to fill it with what’s most important. It’s like when his tiny little bedroom is messy and it all starts spilling out the door because there’s barely space for Usnavi in there never mind extras. He’s gotta sleep on the bed so the stuff piled on the bed has to go out the door, and then when he closes the door he immediately forgets it’s there and always ends up tripping over it when he comes back out later.

He’s chosen to prioritize making friends. Remembering stuff about people makes them happy. Making people happy makes Usnavi happy. It seems pretty simple to him. They don’t make a whole lot of _sense,_ people, but they like it when you care about them and he finds them so interesting that it’s easy to care. He collects all his information during the day, sometimes incidentally just through conversation, sometimes by deliberately going round and asking everyone one by one if he thinks of an important question he needs to collate answers to. Then later at night when his bones always feel too full and prickling to sleep he’ll kick his legs swimming dry-land backstroke while he recites everyone’s favorite colors or favorite songs and it makes something settle in his soul, like finding the groove on the vinyl and the needle’s spinning smooth.

That means there’s not room for other stuff. Homework, for instance, has never felt like a smooth playing record. On the rare occasion he does remember to bring it in to school usually he’s done it wrong. Generally he leaves that outside the door of his mind so he doesn’t have to stress about it in the immediate present, even if it means tripping on it later when he’s being told off by his teacher again.

It seems to him if everyone else just thought a bit more like he did they’d be happier too. For instance, if they stopped spending all their time tryna remember boring things like if they brought their homework and gym kits and started trying to remember fun things like all the words to all the songs they like, then everyone would feel better. Or at least they’d stop being so mad about _him_ forgetting his homework and gym kit all the time, which would certainly make Usnavi feel better because he’d stop getting told off at school and that means the general amount of happiness in the local area would go up.

“I feel like I should argue with him but he’s got a very good point,” his pai says when Usnavi explains this.

“Too clever for his own good, if you ask me,” Mamá says, pinching Usnavi’s nose like she’s stole it and making an _oh no! your nose has gone!_ face. Pfft. He figured that one out years ago.

“That ain’t my real nose,” he says. “And I _do_ have a good point.”

“ _But_ a good point does not mean we’ve forgotten you also haven’t handed in your homework,” Pai says.

Mierda.

***

One of the great tragedies of this cruel Earth is that Usnavi can pour his heart into a masterpiece of poetry and all they say is things like “we were supposed to be writing stories this week, not poems” or “this assignment was supposed to be in English, not English and Spanish” or “I’m sure it was very good, Usnavi, but it’s impossible to read your handwriting.”

One of the even greater tragedies is that this means they always send him home with _more work_.

_This is definitely persecution_ , Usnavi thinks as he struggles to rewrite his apparently unsuitable poem with clear handwriting and no Spanglish. Nina taught him that word, persecution, and that’s definitely what this is.

Writing is the worst. If nobody’s around he can hold the pencil in his fist and it ends up looking so-so even if sometimes the letters are the wrong way round, but in class someone’s always watching and he’s supposed to be old enough to hold it thumb-index-middle finger. This makes his hand cramp and for some reason even when he's sure he's holding it the way he's meant to it jerks all over the place or slips out of his fingers completely. Everyone else in his grade has been learning cursive, and none of them have got beautiful writing but it’s readable. Even Usnavi’s got to admit that his work always looks like might as well have been written by his new baby cousin, who can’t even hold a bottle by himself yet.

“I ain’t see why it _matters_ if I write neat,” he says, shaking his cramp out. His broken wrist on the other side is nearly better, just in a brace now instead of a full cast but it still hurts sometimes and it sucks because now whenever he writes it means both his hands ache at once. “It shouldn’t _matter_ if I can’t write neat. I got a mouth, I can just say whatever it is I was gonna be writin'. I’m good at talkin'.”

“Realmente lo eres,” his mom agrees. “But you do need to write too, sometimes.”

“Only for school,” he says. “And school’s the only one tellin' me to write, so if school just said _actually kids don’t gotta write if they’re good at talkin'_ then I wouldn’t have a problem here.”

“He’s got a point,” Pai says.

“Oh, you always say that and it never helps,” his mom says. “Sí, Usnavi, but sometimes you have to write when you’re a grownup too, so you’ll need it for then.”

Usnavi looks to his dad, who is generally on his side for things like this.

“Lo siento, little one, I wish it weren’t true but it is,” he says.

¡Traición! “What do I need to write when I’m a grown-up? I bet nothin' important.”

“Bueno, like your pai right now, he’s got to write all these forms so that we still have insurance on the store. Then if anything bad happens to it we won’t lose all our money.”

“But that’s so boring.”

“Lo sé,” Pai says, “but it means that you’ll have food and a roof over your head. Unfortunately, pequeño, the world has to be boring sometimes to keep running.”

Usnavi is so appalled by that concept he can’t even think of an argument.

“Pues,” he says, changing track. “I still think the poem works better with Spanish in it. I do know the English words, but it don’t always mean the same just because it means the same, ¿sabes? It sounded better. Don’t see why I gotta write a worse poem just ‘cause they’re jealous they don’t speak two languages.”

Pai takes a sudden interest in reading his boring insurance forms, holding a sheaf of papers in front of his face. Usnavi could swear he’s laughing.

Mamá picks up Usnavi’s original poem again and reads it to herself as he awaits her expert critique. Mamá’s good at songs and stories and things like that. Then she lays the paper back down carefully, flattening out a crumpled corner, saying nothing.

“I’m right, ain’t I? It sounds better if I use both,” he says.

“ _Is_ he right, Rosa?” Pai asks, peeking over the top of his papers.

“Yes,” she says resignedly. “He is definitely right.”

***

If remembering his homework has never felt like a smooth record then actually trying to do it in the first place has always felt like when the cassette tape gets confused and starts chewing up the tape part so it unravels in a big knotty mess and you have to carefully untangle it then wind it back into place with a pencil. Usnavi jabs the eraser end of his pencil hard against his forehead and tries to twist his thoughts back into place but all that happens is it kinda hurts and his brain’s still a busted cassette tape.

Usnavi’s just started fourth grade and para ser honesto he’s starting to get worried. It’s not like he’s ever been a good student but his teachers have liked him in an faintly exasperated way until now. Used to be he’d get a lot of comments like _I know you can do this if you just pay more attention_ or _you’d get better grades if you only applied yourself._

He always has applied himself, with everything he’s got. It’s not his fault if it doesn’t stick. All he can do is keep trying his best.

In fourth grade the feedback pattern has been changing and he doesn’t like that it’s different. Now it’s not _we know you can do this_ , it’s _Usnavi, there’s a lot of mistakes here_ and _Usnavi, it’s clear that you’re struggling with this level of work_ and _Usnavi, you don’t seem to have understood the task at all._

He doesn’t think Miss Marsh _hates_ him. She’s not being unfair, she’s right: he doesn’t understand the tasks. He doesn’t understand most of the work. He’s always kinda bounced through school just about managing, but now she’s made him see that everyone sees this as a much bigger problem than he ever did. Every time she says things like that he gets this sweeping, tight feeling in his stomach like when an elevator starts going up.

Eventually the elevator feeling starts happening whenever his alarm goes off on a school day because the same problems happen every day. The longer it goes on the harder it is to listen to anything until one day he’s standing there after a class he couldn’t comprehend yet again and he nods his way through the wa-wa-wa sound of the same This Is A Problem conversation until his ears, a few seconds late, catch her saying “I really think we might need to call your parents in for a little talk about this.”

His parents?! That sounds like he might be in trouble. Real trouble, not the normal small things like detentions for forgetting homework or for talking too much in class and they’ve called his parents before but they’ve never had to come up to the _school_. The general conclusion has always just been “you need to try harder”, so he work with what he knows and says, “no no no! Please don’t call them, I just wasn’t payin’ attention, I’ll try harder next time.”

“Okay,” Miss Marsh says reluctantly, “but you’ve already started to fall behind, Usnavi. I expect to see some kind of improvement this week or we’ll have to do something, else you won’t be able to catch up.”

“Thanks, thankyou, I’ll be better, I swear,” he says, and wonders how he can be better than his best, which hasn’t been good enough so far.

***

Usnavi has a lot of favorite places. He likes sitting on the counter at the store, he likes crawling in between his parents in bed when it’s early morning or after a bad dream or when it gets cold in winter and they can’t afford the heat that week. He likes Abuela’s apartment, sitting at her table with the battered peeling red-and-white paint and cooking pans hanging from nails in the wall and all the empty glass coke bottles full of flowers. He likes standing at the point at where the waves hit the sand on the beach in Playa Rincon, whenever they get to go there.

Right now, Usnavi’s numero uno favorite place is his cousin’s house. About five months ago this was his tío and tía’s house and it was okay but they argue with each other more than he'd like so he didn’t come over much, because arguing makes him feel sick. But now the baby has been born and from the very first time Usnavi met him he started thinking of this place as His New Cousin Sonny’s House because his new cousin Sonny is quite literally the best thing in the whole world. Usnavi comes over whenever he can, arguing or no. And today he’s here with Abuela, who is babysitting while his tío and tía are out, it’s the first time since starting fourth grade that he doesn’t feel anxious and tense, and right at this moment, Usnavi’s life is perfect.

“Oooh,” says Sonny.

“¡Escucha!” Usnavi gasps to Abuela. “He said my name. The first bit, anyway. Oooo-snavi. ¿Puedes decir Ooo-snaaa-vee?”

“Mneh,” says Sonny, indifferent.

“No pasa nada, we’ll work on it. But you gotta learn mine first before anyone else’s, okay, Sonny? It’s a good name, I got it ’cause it was on a ship. You got a good name too. It’s got a ess and a nuh and it ends with an eee so it’s almost the same as my name, if you think about it, pero yours rhymes with more stuff. That’s smart, you can write songs about yourself. Sonny. Bunny. Honey-money-funny…uh…gunny?”

Usnavi likes rhymes. Nothing rhymes with Usnavi all the way, only the end bit, but he can rhyme along some of the letters if he takes the word apart. Like the u- can be _you_ or _who_ or _woooh!_ , or he can think of lots of good words with a matching v sound. That’s called _assonance_ , and you shouldn’t laugh because it’s a proper literature word even though it says _ass_ at the beginning, or that’s what Nina told him anyway. Shouldn’t go round starting words with _ass_ if you don’t want people to laugh at them, is what Usnavi thinks, but nobody ever bothers to consult him, do they?

“Sonny, honey, you’re so funny, I will give you lots of money,” he sings, then adds privately to Abuela, “I don’t got no money. But by the time he’s old enough to figure it out I’ll be rich.”

“That’s okay then,” she says. “Will your old Abuela see any of those riches?”

“Yeees! I’ll buy you a big house somewhere with lots of stars,” Usnavi says. “Even though your name don’t rhyme with money.”

“Muy generoso,” Abuela murmurs.

***

It’s rough to be nine years old and have the whole world on your shoulders, which Usnavi’s sure it must be because he feels like it’s all about two seconds away from falling in on him. It makes his spine jangle every time he thinks about it. But he said he’d be better and he’s trying.

Usnavi’s sitting on the floor behind the counter doing his homework but customers keep coming in so he has to keep standing up to see who his pai is talking to. It’s making homework take a lot longer but whatever, he needs to take breaks to let his hand stop cramping. The bell rings on the door. Usnavi climbs up onto the small step-stool his parents have for if they need to reach the high shelves.

Barely visible over the counter are some lopsided bangs and two short, sticky-out pigtails and a deep frown. It’s Vanessa García who sometimes Abuela used to babysit at the same time as him when they were little kids. They don’t see each other so often now they’re both at school.

“¡Wepa! Vanessa!” he says.

“Hi, Usnavi,” she says, putting a bag of M&Ms down on the counter. “Hi, Mateo.”

“Where’s your mom, Vanessa?” Pai asks, taking the M&Ms to scan through.

“Home,” Vanessa answers. She puts a twenty-dollar bill down too. “Says she wants her usual smokes.”

“You know I can’t sell those to you, chiquita? You’re far too young.”

“Told her that. She says how it don’t matter if I’m too young to buy ‘em ‘cause you know her, so you know they ain’t for me.”

“I’m still not going to sell cigarettes to a seven year old. But the M&Ms are on the house. As an apology from the manager.”

Vanessa’s face lights up. “Oh! Gracias!”

She picks up the M&Ms and opens them, taking a few long moments poking through the bag to locate a red one, looking very much like she’s waiting for something. Usnavi and his dad wait too. “It’s only, she ran out of cigarettes today. She gets cranky without them.”

Usnavi doesn’t know much about Vanessa’s mom. She never hangs out with the other parents, not like Camila or even like Dani who doesn’t have her own kids but is always around and looks after Usnavi sometimes when Abuela and his parents are busy. Dani is fun. She lets him sit in the salon chairs while the new girl Carla spins him round really fast until he’s dizzy.

Usnavi suspects Vanessa’s mom is not fun like Dani. The adults always get this Look when they talk about her, and whenever he sees Vanessa she’s always with Dani or hanging out with Nina’s family or by herself, like today. It makes him kinda sad. He’s not really sure why, only that he thinks if his mamá wasn’t with him much and if he had no dad he’d probably feel very lonely.

“I’ll tell you what,” Pai says. “I’ll pay for them out of my own money and walk you home, your mamá can pay me back once we’re there.”

“I don’t need to be walked home,” Vanessa says, outraged. “I’m seven and three quarters. I can look after myself.”

“Lo siento, lo siento, of course you can. But your mom wanted her cigarettes, right? This is the only way I can get them to her without breaking the law.”

“That’s true,” Vanessa concedes. “Okay then. I guess you can walk with me.”

“Bueno! And while we’re walking we can have a little chat, see how things are going with you. You two wait here a moment, I’ll get Rosa to watch the store while I take Vanessa home.”

“I can watch the store,” Usnavi says.

“But then who will watch you?”

“I can watch me!” he calls after his dad, who just laughs as he leaves. “Shiiit, I don’t never get no respect around here.”

Vanessa laughs too, which is nice, because usually Vanessa just rolls her eyes at him. Usnavi likes her okay, but she’s real grouchy sometimes.

He contemplates her for a while. She’s the same age as Nina. Nina definitely doesn’t have the same trouble as Usnavi does with schoolwork and often helps him with his even though she’s a year younger, but he’s heard a lot of people say that Nina is Extremely Clever, so he thinks that’s probably not an equal comparison. She reads books way more difficult than anyone else even in Usnavi’s grade and probably is gonna be president by the time she’s like, twelve. Vanessa, as far as he knows, is pretty much just standard at school.

“Vanessa,” he says. “D’you know how to hold a pen proper?”

She gives him a scathing look. “ _Obviously_ I do. All you gotta do is —“ she pinches her thumb and first two fingers together, exactly like she’s holding a real pen. “I’m not a _baby,_ everyone knows how to do that once they’re at school. I can do joined-up writin' and everythin’.”

“Cool,” Usnavi says, his throat suddenly hurting as much as his hand. “Yeah, cool, me too, I was just checkin’. Anyway, I got work to do, important fourth grader stuff, can’t be chattin’ all day.”

He ducks back behind the counter and stares down at his worksheet, but the ignition in his head to make him start doesn’t kick in so he just keeps staring, very hard, until Mamá comes to take over store duty. She crouches down next to him as Vanessa leaves with Pai. 

“Cheer up, buttercup,” she says. “¿Qué pasa?”

“Nothin’,” he lies. “I’m just tryna concentrate.”

Mamá gives him a hug, ruffling his hair. It sort of makes him feel better and sort of makes him want to cry even more than he already does. Eventually he gives up and holds the pen in his fist, when he’s sure she’s not watching. The work gets done much faster. It doesn’t really feel like a win.

***

All week, Usnavi tries hard to prove that he can improve. He brings in all his homework. If he finds his thoughts drifting in class he pulls himself back. It’s like trying to wrap a hundred balloons in a ribbon: every time he gets a few, a bunch more on the other side tries to float away and he’s keeping them all down for now but all this running around is _exhausting_.

All week he manages, and then on Friday something _snaps,_ as if every balloon broke out and headed for the sky at once. It seems like something else is in control of his body: his leg keeps jiggling, his hands keep tapping. He sits down in class when they’re supposed to be doing math and somehow what he ends up doing is singing under his breath then singing _over_ his breath till he gets told off. He bites the inside of his cheek to keep the song locked in after the third time that happens and reaches over to see whether Benny has any cool erasers in his pencil case because Usnavi’s messed up his long division as always, and he’s long since chewed the eraser off the end of his own pencil.

Usnavi doesn’t have a pencil case. He did, but he lost it, so all his pencils just bump around in the bottom of his backpack with all the crumbs and bits of paper he hasn’t had chance to clean out. Turns out Benny’s erasers are just plain ones but while he’s in there he does discover one of those little colorful extra-bouncy balls that you get out of the machines you put a quarter in and turn.

He doesn’t _mean_ to bounce it across the room. But what’s a boy to do when he finds himself holding a tiny and very bouncy ball, just _put it back?_ It happens without him thinking about it.

“Oops,” he says, the second it leaves his hand. Miss Marsh stands up looking furious. It takes her a few tries to catch the ball, which the class obviously finds hilarious, so by the time she’s got it tucked in her desk drawer she is _fuming._

“I didn’t mean to—“

“Go sit at the back!” she snaps, pointing. “Hopefully you’ll be less distracted there.”

“Yo, can I have my ball back, though?” Benny asks, and gets a withering look for his trouble. “Is that a no?”

No punishment is greater than being forced to sit at the back, walking past everyone staring at him to a table all by himself like he’s been banished on a deserted island. The table is wobbly on one leg which is probably why it’s not being used, wedged against the back wall, but Miss Marsh shoves a couple workbooks underneath it to steady it up a little. Usnavi sits side-on in his chair so as to be facing the same direction as everyone else, feet tucked up like he’s crouching. 

Mierda. What’s even the point of school if you can’t whisper or pass notes to anyone? But then, he can still _see_ Benny. Idly, he wonders if he could throw a pice of paper right the way to the front.

It doesn’t feel like he does these things: it’s like he thinks of the idea and then by magic there’s a piece of paper flying through the air and hitting definitely not Benny. Kendra in the third row of tables turns around with a scandalized gasp, and then waves her arm in the air.

“Miss Marsh! Miss Marsh, Usnavi’s throwin' things at me!”

“I was not!” Usnavi says. “I was throwin' things at Benny.”

“Man, your aim sucks,” Benny says. Usnavi holds his middle finger up.

“ _Usnavi De la Vega_!

“Sorry, Miss Marsh,” he says, shrinking down.

“I’ve had more than enough of you today,” she says. “Face the back wall.”

Usnavi, confused, does a 180 rotation in his chair. She makes an aggrieved noise.

“Don’t be stupid, you know I meant take your chair round to the other side of the _table.”_

The other kids are giggling again and Usnavi's not sure why. The joke seems to be on him. He didn't know she meant that. He wasn’t trying to be stupid. It just…happens.

It’s even harder to concentrate when he’s facing the back. All there is is blank white paper and a blank white wall in front of him, not even a window to look out of. The class settles down and his whole body is burning with embarrassment and the silence is so loud.

As a rule, Usnavi likes loud. Usnavi likes singing at the top of his lungs and sitting right next to a boombox turned up so high that it shakes his bones, and he likes the chaos of weekend mornings in the store. This is the exception to the rule, the nighttime can't-sleep kind of loud where all he can hear is shuffling and breathing and a faint sound of distant generators and traffic and electricity right down to the humming in the plug sockets, and his own heartbeat that’s gone hyperquick with something he’s never been able to name. It feels like he’s trapped in a box, surrounded by live wires. That’d explain the faint electric-shock feelings in his back, in his arms.

He taps his pencil quickly leaving dots all over his paper like grey ants, then twists in his chair to see if there’s anything going on behind him. Miss Marsh glares at him and makes a _turn around!_ movement with her finger.

Usnavi turns and slumps over the table so his head is eye-level with his book, mouth pressing on his upturned wrist. He bites gently, because sometimes biting something makes life make more sense and so does the sharp shock of pain. Mamá taught him not to do this. When he was a kid, like five years old, he’d always have bruises all over his forearms from it and people used to ask a lot of questions, so now usually he just chews his shirts instead but that doesn’t seem enough today. Then he takes his pencil in his fist and scribbles as hard as he can. It helps, so he keeps doing it. 

Before he knows it there’s the sound of the class packing up their bags and Miss Marsh is coming over to see his work. Usnavi has deeply indented teethmarks in his wrist and dark grey tornado-scribbles all over his exercise book. What he does not have is any math.

Oh, this isn’t gonna be good.

“You haven’t answered a _single_ question! What’s your excuse this time?”

Everyone turns around to watch, the endlessly intriguing prospect of seeing someone in trouble drawing their attention. It feels like it adds to the noise, like how he can tell even with his eyes closed when the neon striplights are on just by the sound of their buzzing he can hear a buzzing from every pair of eyes staring at him even though he’s looking at the floor.

“Usnavi? Are you listening to me? Explain yourself!”

Usnavi goes to explain himself, and instead bursts straight up into noisy, humiliating tears.

“Oh!” Miss Marsh says, shocked. Usnavi’s pretty shocked too. He really hadn’t been expecting that. “What on earth—Usnavi, what’s wrong?”

“You made him cry!” He can hear Benny yell accusingly from the front of the class. “Move, get out of the way—“

“Benny, get back to your seat.”

“No way!”

“Benny, I _said_ go back to your—“

The rest of the class is all talking now, muttering excitedly amongst themselves, Benny’s arguing with the teacher, Usnavi can still hear the world humming to the wrong frequency and his own heartbeat around his tears and then someone touches his arm. He does the only thing he can think of: shoves them away as hard as he can, drops to the floor and crawls right under the table, then presses his back against the wall and pulls his t-shirt up over his face to hide behind it.

***

Benny is sent off to get another teacher and then the bell for recess goes so the rest of the class is shooed out. Usnavi hyperventilates inside his shirt for an indeterminate amount of time and bites and bites and bites at his arm until it’s hurting all over. Miss Marsh keeps trying to talk to him and coax him out from under the table but he doesn’t really hear anything until:

“So what are we hiding from, then?”

It’s Pai. They called his _parents._ They don't call your parents into school unlesss it’s big trouble.  His voice is very gentle. It doesn’t sound like big trouble but it must be, if he left Mamá to run the store alone. “Usnavi? Can you hear me?"

Usnavi nods. The movement pulls the shirt down from off his face so he screws his eyes shut very tightly instead.

"¿Qué pasó? You haven’t got this upset for a long time, mi pequeño.”

“I-I-I didn’t _mean_ to,” he wails. “Everythin' keeps just bein' so difficult and I didn’t mean to push Miss Marsh or be bad or do my work wrong, I tried really hard but I don’t know why I can't do it and—and—and—I don’t _know!_ “

“I see,” his dad says. “Okay. Vamos, te tengo. ”

He pulls Usnavi to him and awkwardly maneuvers them both out from under the table, picking him up properly once they’re both out in the open. Usnavi holds on for dear life. “I think I better take him home.”

“Yes, I think that’s a good idea,” Miss Marsh agrees.

“I’m sorry,” Usnavi says to her, keeping his eyes closed. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I didn’t mean to.”

“Alright, Usnavi,” she says. “I know you didn’t. We’ll deal with this when you’ve calmed down, okay?”

He thinks he’s probably never gonna calm down, actually, and that this is just how he's gonna have to live his life from here on out, but he’s got the hiccups now and probably couldn’t say it aloud even if he tried. He just hides his face against his dad’s shirt and cry-hiccups quietly the whole way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [content warnings for this chapter:
> 
> \- bullying. only in the first section and then they leave him alone. usnavi does get hurt (broken wrist) as a result of the situation, but not directly by the children involved.  
> \- usnavi has a meltdown in class, which includes biting himself as a stim.  
> \- it's only in passing but vanessa's mom is pretty negligent, think: sending a seven year old out alone to try and buy cigarettes for her]


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings in end notes. just to make sure nobody’s mistaken in my intentions, this story isn’t making a blanket statement saying that this is everyone’s experience or that professional support is inherently negative (hell, it was the best thing that ever happened to me once they got it right). i’m all about good professional support. this is very explicitly not the right way to do it.
> 
> and again, a reminder that this is set nearly 20 years ago. things have changed a great deal re: attitudes and awareness, though there’s still a long way to go.
> 
> oh, also, i know they don't mention autism by name like they do the other stuff: that's because he's autistic, but nobody picks up on that part til he's an adult. but it's there, trust.

Usnavi spends the day like it’s a sick day once he's levelled out, sleepy on Abuela’s couch watching pirated Disney tapes on her little black and white TV-VCR. The only thing that’s different to sick days is his parents close the store in the early afternoon.

They sit and talk with him for a long, long time. They tell him he’s not in trouble, they’re just worried. Usnavi sits in Pai’s lap and tells them all about the work, all the stress, just how truly difficult it is to be a fourth grader with the woes of the world piled so high on him and especially when those woes include long division. Then they go up to the school, and Usnavi stays at Abuela’s.

Things seem normal over the weekend, even if he feels jittery every time he thinks about facing the music on Monday morning. But on Monday morning, he’s taken to Abuela’s again, and on Tuesday too. His parents keep going up to the school, but Usnavi stays home and helps Abuela with her chores.

Usually all this time off would be a treat, but the events as he understands them are: he got in trouble. He pushed a teacher. Now he’s at home in the middle of the day on a Tuesday, while his parents are constantly talking to his school. They say he’s not in trouble, but seems obvious what’s happening here.  
  
“Abuela,” he says, anxiously, “did I get expelled?”

“Not that I know of,” Abuela says. She pats the couch next to her. “Ven a sentarte conmigo, mijito.“

He sits next to her and whispers, “I pushed a teacher,” ashamed.

“So I’ve been told,” she says. “It isn't like you.”

“It wasn’t on purpose.” He pushes his fingers all the way down in the turn-ups of his jeans and wiggles them about. “Maybe my brain is messed up. It feels messed up.”

Abuela lifts some of his hair and peers into his ear. “Looks fine to me.”

“Abue _la,”_ he says, squirming away and laughing. “That’s silly.”

“Abuelas are allowed to be silly. But I know what I’m about. Your brain is not so important, mijo,” she says, cupping her hands over his cheeks and kissing his forehead. “Keep it in your head and it’ll sort itself out. Focus on your heart.”

“Eh, that’s busted too,” Usnavi says with a dismissive flap of his hand. “It goes all loco same time my head does.”

“That’s because it wants you to pay attention to it,” she says. “So what’s it telling you?”

Usnavi thinks about it. He’s not sure. Seems like this might be _metaphorical_. Usnavi loves using metaphors himself but they’re tricky ground when other people start throwing them around all over the place. Especially when there’s feelings involved in the mix because feelings are a whole 'nother ball game, that ball game very often being something close to playing dodgeball blindfolded.

“I think it’s tellin' me I want a hug?” he says, because that’s almost always the case regardless of his indecipherable moods.

Abuela opens her arms.

***

On Wednesday Usnavi goes back to school. Normality does not accompany him.

He hadn’t really noticed that life always goes a certain way until the route suddenly changed in front of him. Maybe he fell into a parallel dimension Usnavi’s life where everything is just different enough to be nauseating. Okay, so not like he’s great at sticking to a schedule or keeping his routine without an adult there to point him in the right direction, but he knows what’s supposed to happen when, at least.

Like: usually a bunch of the parents take turns doing the school run, but even though Camila’s taking everyone in today, Usnavi’s mamá walks him to school alone. 

Like: he doesn’t get to play before the first bell goes. He sees Benny as they cross the yard and tries to run over to join him, but Mamá holds his hand tighter and says “not today, Usnavi”, so he just waves and shrugs. She walks him through to the reception area, tells the lady on the desk their names and that they’re here to see Mrs Carson.

They sit in the big soft-cushioned chairs to wait. Usnavi tips to sit upside down with his head hanging off the edge until Mama makes him go rightside up again because his shoes are scuffing up the off-white wall behind him, even though the paintwork’s stained and dirty already so what difference does it make? She says it’s everyone having kind of thinking that leads to paint getting dirty in the first place, so instead he sits with his legs bent up on the chair and scrapes his teeth against his knee through his jeans.

“Usnavi.”

“Yef?” he says into his leg.

“Stop biting yourself, mijo, we talked about this, remember?”

“Oh. Sí.” He hadn’t remembered.

Like: they are taken to a room that Usnavi has never been to before, further down the corridor past the nurse’s room and through a very small classroom and into an office. There’s a lady behind the desk, and she looks like a teacher, but like, _really_ like a teacher. She might be forty, sixty or a thousand: one of those people who instead of growing up into an age just grows into a profession. Usnavi’s fourth-grade teacher Miss Marsh is young-ish for an adult, or at least she isn’t _old_ , and she wears weird sweater-vests and mostly only looks like a teacher because of the fact she's always standing in front of a class telling them things. This lady has a neat blouse. Her hair is greying at the sides and pinned back . Her glasses have an actual string on that goes around her neck, which he didn’t think real people did. She’s probably what school would look like if school were a person, except maybe not Usnavi’s school specifically, unless she’s secretly covered in graffiti.

“So what do you think, Usnavi?”

“…What?” he says. Had they been talking to him?

The lady says, “I said that we’re going to be spending some time together for the next little while to see what’s going on with you, what do you think?”

“Oh,” he says, trying to look behind her to see all the colorful posters on the back wall. There’s animal pictures on them. Two of them are whales. “Are whales your favorites? My favorites are dogs, but I like pigeons too even though everyone says they’re dirty. Am I here because I was bad the other day?”

“You weren’t bad,” Mama says. “But we don’t want you to have another upset like that, so Mrs Carson is going to help you so that it doesn’t happen again.”

“We’re here to make sure you can keep up with all your work and control your emotions, Usnavi,” Mrs Carson says. “You’re going to be doing your classes in the resource room for a while so that we can keep an eye on you. That’s the room you came in through.”

“Wait, what? I wasn’t told he’d be separated from the rest of his grade,” his Mamá says, frowning. “I thought he’d just have someone helping him in his normal lessons.”

“We don’t have enough staff for that,” Mrs Carson waves, like _you know how it is, oh well_. “Our resources are very limited, but there’s a good chance he’ll be able to return to the mainstream classroom eventually, and we’ll be happy to provide you with information about diagnosis or other services outside of the school if that becomes necessary.”

“¿Qu—what?” his mom says. Usnavi sucks on his wrist, watching tension build static in the air. “What do you mean, a _diagnosis_? I don’t—he just needs some help understanding his schoolwork and managing his stress levels, doesn’t he? That’s what we discussed on Friday.”

“Oh, maybe, maybe. Hard to say at this point, really. But I’ve spoken with his teachers and it seems clear to me that if we resolve Usnavi’s behavior problems then—“

“What _behavior problems_?!” Usnavi and his mom both ask, offended.

Mrs Carson looks at them as though she’s surprised they don’t already know. “Well, his consistent disruptions during class, for instance. I’m sure you’re aware of this.”

“We…do get some calls home,” Mamá admits warily. “But this seems like —“  


“And I was informed by his third-grade teacher that he instigated three separate physical altercations with other students last year.“

“I did what?”

“Started some fights,” Mamá translates.

“They wasn’t _fights_!” he objects. “I only did it ’cause Anton threw all Nina’s books in the dirt on purpose so I had to, and then there was two bigger kids ganging up on Matty and —“

“Usnavi is a very gentle soul,” Mamá says. “He was only trying to do the right thing. We’ve had a talk about better ways to deal with bullies and he’s had no trouble like that since, so I don’t —”

“Mrs De la Vega,” Mrs Carson interrupts gently. “Your son _did_ push a faculty member last week. Now, I’m not saying he’s _violent_ , but it does suggest a lack of impulse control that’s only corroborated by his inappropriate behavior in the classroom, and I assure you that addressing these problems will have a big impact on his academic performance.”

Usnavi didn’t get a word of that. Mamá looks like she wants to argue, her mouth working a little, and then her shoulders slump in defeat. She doesn’t usually let herself look lost, even if she is, but right now there’s uncertainty writ all over her. “Usnavi isn’t…I mean, he’s not…do you really think this is the right thing to do? I don’t—I don’t know a lot about any of this. But if you think it will help him…”  She adds a little desperately, “he’s a very good boy, you know.”

“I’m sure he is. And we deal with a lot of cases like this. We just want to see him be the _best_ he can be, don’t we, Usnavi?”

Usnavi’s been bobbing along the waves of this conversation without really knowing where the tide’s taking him so he clings onto that last part like a life preserver, because it’s about the only thing that made a lick of sense in all of it: he _definitely_ wants to be the best he can be. He nods enthusiastically.

“Wonderful!” she says, smiling.

***

Wonderful isn’t the word he’d use. The word he’d use is…confusing.

This is where kids come when they can’t do lessons with everyone else. Mrs Carson calls it the resource room, but Usnavi thinks of it as the blue room. That’s on account of it’s painted blue all over, with an ocean mural on one wall. Unoriginal, but didn’t she literally say they were _lacking in resources,_ so it might not be a creative name but at least give him more points for accuracy, and besides he can't spell "resource", he doesn't know how many esses it's supposed to have.

He asks if blue is Mrs Carson’s favorite. She says it’s a relaxing color. He says his favorite is red, like his t-shirt, see. She says, that’s nice, this is where he’ll be sitting, but not all the time because there's some assessments and preparation they need to do so he might be in her office or the quiet little room at the side, which looks more like a closet to him but then again so does his bedroom, not everywhere can be big and he's only small himself.

There’s a real mishmash of folk here, Usnavi figures out over the first week, about six to ten students depending when it is. Some stay all the time, some are in and out. Some kids it’s because they don't know much English yet, some because they can’t do the work everyone else their age does, like Matty from Usnavi’s grade who comes here every few days to get extra reading lessons because he says the words still get jumbled when he tries. Some because they’ve got some kind of disability like Aisha who doesn’t talk out loud almost ever, though he’s not sure why, but she smiles brightly at Usnavi when he’s introduced to the class. Some of them seem to just get sent here because they get into trouble but not quite enough trouble to get suspended and they need somewhere to keep them while they decide what to do with them.

Usnavi isn't sure which one of those categories he fits into. His parents and Mrs Carson and the aides in the blue room keep telling him he’s not being punished whenever he asks. He’s not so sure about that, either.

There’s a class where he can sit and draw at the same time he would usually be in Art, but it’s not the same. Aisha lets him borrow her red coloring pencil. He takes it and does the only sign-language he knows, hand away from his mouth like blowing a kiss which means “thank you”, and she claps happily when he does. Aisha is really nice, but Usnavi misses the clutter and paint-smell and chaos of his usual class.

When he’d usually be doing music class, he’s off in the little side-room (it is also painted blue), doing stuff like copying out text to show what his handwriting looks like, or they make him sit and read increasingly difficult sentences from a long piece of laminated paper out loud, or they make him answer lots of multiple choice tests. All the questions are vague and incomprehensible like “I often feel restless/energetic” or “I often run around even when I know I shouldn’t”.

The answer options don’t even make sense. Never-Rarely-Sometimes-Often-Always. What’s his answer meant to be, then, “I often run around even when I know I shouldn’t, sometimes?” Does that mean he does it sometimes, or he does it often-sometimes? What does that mean? How often is often? Who’s telling him he shouldn’t? 

He puts “sometimes” for all of them without reading most of the questions so that he can be done faster, sets his pencil down and says, “so can I go back to Miss Marsh’s class now?” 

Mrs Carson frowns.

“No, Usnavi,” she says. She says his name a lot. Is she worried he’s going to forget it? He’s not _that_ absent-minded. “I told you, you’ll be working in here for a little while. We’ll see about whether you can go back in your normal classes when we’ve figured out what’s wrong, okay?”

“Oh, right. So I don’t get to sit with Benny?”

“Not for the moment, no.”

By Friday, it’s starting to sink in that he has no idea how long he has to stay here. Or what he’s supposed to do to get let out sooner. It’s starting to sink in that she said “whether” he can go back, not “when”.

If this is a punishment, and by now he’s pretty sure it is, it’s one he doesn’t know the parameters of. Wonderful isn’t the word. The word he’d use is terrifying.

***

“They put you in the _slammer_ , man,” Benny rages as they play on the swings after school. “Behind _bars_ , what, just for livin’ out loud? That ain’t right! You want me to bust you out on Monday? I get a plastic spoon with my pudding cup, we could tunnel.”

“There ain't no bars, it’s just a blue door.” Usnavi trails his sneakers morosely in the dust around his feet. The sole’s coming unstuck on one of them. He’ll have to get Pai to superglue them again. “I just gotta wait it out. If I’m good prob'ly they’ll let me out sooner.”

“Oh, _sure_ , wait it out. Today it’s a blue door and _wait it out,_ next thing you know they got you in solitary and they lyin’ about knowing who murdered your lady because…uh…reasons, I forget what. But that’s how it’ll go, you mark my words.”

Usnavi turns this over in his mind a few times. “Huh?” he says.

“Ain’t you never seen Shawshank Redemption?”

“No,” Usnavi says. “It’s an R rated and it’s too long.”

“This is why you got no understandin' of how the real world works,” Benny says sagely, then sighs. “Class sucks without you. I don’t get it, I done worse than throw some stuff around before and the man never came after me about it.”

“It’s supposed to help me think right, _”_ Usnavi says. “Benny, do you think I have _behavior problems?”_

“ _No_ ,” Benny says, fiercely and immediately. “Ask me, the only person who’s behavin’ wrong is Miss Marsh. She’s a narc. Ask me, _she’s_ the one who should be in prison, for kidnapping my best friend and stealin’ my personal property. You know she still won’t give me that ball back? I paid a whole damn quarter for that.”

***

The parameters of his punishment regarding the subject of will they ever let Usnavi escape this tedious blue purgatory remain elusive knowledge.

They’ve stopped making him do the weird tests and now he just seems to be doing easier versions of his usual work. He appreciates the easiness, but why he can’t just do all this stuff in class since he’s basically just going through worksheets? Mrs Carson told him that the resource room has less distractions, there’s less classmates which means they can each have more individual time with the teachers. It’s a more constructive learning environment, is what she says.

More _soul-crushingly dull_ environment, if you ask Usnavi, but if that’s what she means by constructive, sure.

“Yo, Aisha, guess what,” he hisses, and when she turns around he makes a grotesque face, tongue out, nose wrinkled up. She hides her own face in the crook of her elbow against the desk, which is how she always laughs, like she’s making a little cocoon of private happiness between just her and her arm. Usnavi grins, pleased with himself.

“Let’s all focus, Usnavi,” Mrs Carson says, and goes back to helping Matty with his reading.

Focusing is boring. Usnavi is itchy all over from it. He's supposed to be reading too, but he looks at the excerpt of story and his eyes inform him that they don’t feel like taking any of it in right now, so instead he drums his hands against his knees loudly. David, one of the aides helping out today, says, “Usnavi, remember your Goals, quiet hands.”

“Sorry,” Usnavi says, and lays his hands out flat on the table for a few seconds, which is to show that he’s heard the instruction and acknowledged it.

More individual time with the teachers mostly seems to mean less chance of getting away with _anything._ Even little things like knee-drums.

They don’t really get mad like shouting, only a string of quietly insistent verbal warnings. They keep notes about all of the warnings and all the praise in a notebook, and then at the end of the day they balance it all up and send a little report card home to his parents along with a mark out of five, which is denoted in a line of pink smiley-face stamps along the bottom of the card. Hitting more of his Goals means more smiley-faces. If he gets five stamps, he supposedly gets a reward. 

So far, it’s been a month and he hasn’t gotten a five even once. Mamá and Pai say he’s doing very well anyway, and they give him candy on Fridays as a reward. He doesn’t tell his teachers, in case it gets his parents in trouble for messing with the system. 

Repeatedly ignoring warnings for his Negative Behaviors means less smiley-faces at the end of the day, and they take away his outside recess time tomorrow if he gets a flat zero. If he’s disrupting the rest of the class too much they also make him go sit in the little side-room by himself. He tells Benny this and Benny says “I _told_ you, man, that’s how it all starts” and then nods ominously for a very long time.

Already Usnavi has lost track of how many times he's had to sit in the side room, and he misses recess nearly every day. Apparently he Behaves Negatively a lot more than he thought.

These are the things which Usnavi is not supposed to do:

  * Mixing languages (or using Spanish at all. But it never specifies _in English._ Mrs Carson says, “you should assume that it’s always English”. He says, “why?”. She says, “Because English is what we use, Usnavi, and if you keep distracting the class with this I’ll have to make a note in the book.”)


  * Writing with his pen held in his fist (She gives him worksheets with dotted outlines of letters to trace, like a first grader, and she moves his fingers around the pen. “Like this,” she says, and the second she lets go the pen falls out of his hand.)


  * Getting the letters backward (more letter-outline worksheets. He tries to explain that he knows which way they’re meant to be, it’s just sometimes they get turned around on the trip between his brain and his hand. She says, “don’t worry, practice will help”, so he keeps practicing.)


  * Getting frustrated at the letters being backwards and crumpling up his work and throwing it across the room (not appropriate behavior.)


  * Talking when he shouldn’t, or talking too loudly, or too fast, or too excited, or not talking at all when he’s been asked a question because he wasn’t paying attention, (not appropriate behavior.)


  * Tearing little corners of paper off his worksheets, chewing himself or other stuff, jiggling his legs around, playing with his buttons, tapping his pencil, tapping his hands, dancing, beatboxing, singing, standing up for no reason, doodling, etc etc. (not appropriate behavior.)



Things which Usnavi is supposed to do:

  * Finish his work


  * Be quiet. Quiet mouth, quiet hands, quiet feet.


  * Die of boredom within the hour, probably.



Usnavi’s no mathematician - yet another thing he’s bad at, the list goes on - but all of this seems to be pretty simple math to him:

Certain things are bad + Usnavi does those things = Usnavi is bad.

Except…Usnavi doesn’t _think_ he’s bad. He never thought of himself as badly-behaved, everyone always says he’s very nice, and like his Mamá told him: good people apologize and try to do better when they’ve done something wrong. He always tries to do better. Like, clearly he’s failing at it, yes, but he’s doing his best and he keeps apologizing.

“ _Usnavi_ ,” David says. “Quiet hands. On the table.”

“Sorry.”

Maybe: b ad things + Usnavi does the bad things + Usnavi can’t stop doing them even though he tries = Usnavi is _stupid_. 

He can't find a way to argue with the math on that one.

***

“Do you think I’m stupid?” he asks Benny, and Benny says, “who said that? Has someone been talkin' shit?”

“Nobody said that,” Usnavi says. The grass in the park has been mowed recently. It’s got all those loose piles cut all around. He stirs some up with his hands, sending green summertime smell all around almost enough to hide the hot city summer and air pollution. A bug lands on his arm. This must be what it’s like to live in the country. “Well, except for me, I said that.”

“Then you’re stupid for thinkin' you’re stupid ‘cause you ain’t stupid.”

“That don’t make any sense. Maybe you’re the one who’s stupid.”

“Maybe you’re shut up. _”_

“Maybe _you’re_ shut up!” Usnavi retorts, and dumps a handful of grass on Benny’s head. 

Later, Abuela will tut in disapproval when she and Usnavi go to do laundry together and there’s grass all in the pockets and the double-turned-up ends of his jeans.

“It was a matter of honor,” Usnavi says loftily. “I won.”

“Oh, in that case,” she says. “As long as you won.”

***

The ocean mural on the wall, Usnavi assumes, is meant to be calming. Mrs Carson had said, blue is a relaxing color. Blue fading to sponge-stippled white-tipped waves lapping, everything flowing and swaying soft like water. 

The actual ocean, Usnavi reflects, has never told him to have quiet anything. The actual ocean has never made him go sit in the side-room all alone or taken away his recess.

The actual ocean, Usnavi knows, is loud and big and full of movement. It’s for fun and cooling down and splashing in and it’s where his family’s home was before home was in New York. It’s where his Pai picks him up and tosses him into the waves like he’s a beach ball, and where Mamá teaches him how to do forward somersaults in the water, and where he can speak Spanish if Spanish is what he wants to speak.

This ocean mural, Usnavi thinks, is a damn liar. It looks nice on the outside but it’s just a trick and looking at it makes his spine feel as if it’s been put in wrong. It itches under his skin where he wants to crash like waves too, but if he lets himself it always ends with a warning, always a note in the book, accumulating Negative Behaviors till it starts to feel like he’s drowning in them. It starts to feel like drowning just to go through the blue door in the morning, or even to think too hard about it at home. There isn't a shoreline painted on the mural.

He tries explaining to Mrs Carson that he _needs_ to move around. That he gets _bored_ if he doesn’t. She doesn’t understand. She tells him that it’s okay to lose focus sometimes, everyone does, but if it happens he should just guide his attention back to his work. Then he won’t be bored, because he’ll be too busy working. 

He tries to explain that no, bored means he _can’t_ work because he gets too bored to be able to do anything, and that it hurts, a sharp-dull ache in his back and vibrations across his body and little painful sparks in his brain.

She says, “Calm down, please. We don’t make excuses, do we, Usnavi? We set Goals and we achieve them. Quiet mouth, quiet hands, now.”

He puts his gesturing hands flat on the table and bites the inside of his cheek because she can’t see him doing it to tell him to stop. It  _isn't_ an excuse. 

Maybe he’s using the wrong words. Emotions are hard to define. There’s bad ones. There’s good ones. Specifics can be a problem. Maybe what he thinks of as bored — like the fear in the darkness after waking up from a bad dream, like physically _painful_ so that biting is the preferable sensation just to distract himself, like being close enough to the surface of the water to see the sunlight but not knowing if you’ve got enough air in your burning lungs to make it that far — is not what other people think of as bored. Maybe this is a different bad emotion, and most people don’t experience boredom as _this feels like it might literally kill me._

He tries to explain it. She doesn’t understand. She tells him to be good and sit still, because he’s being very disruptive and incidentally, his hands aren’t being very quiet, flapping around like that. On the table, please, she doesn’t want to have to put him in the other room again.

If the blue room is an ocean, he’s buried neck-deep in the sand, and the tide is coming in fast.

“But it hurts,” he says, panicking. He stands up. Everyone in the small classroom looks at him, then looks away quickly like they don’t want to get involved. “No lo entiendes, it hurts if I don’t move around enough, you gotta believe me, I’m not _lyin'—“_

In the end, they have to call his parents to pick him up early again that day.

***

He asks Nina, and she looks him over and says very frankly “well, you aren’t very good at school things. But that’s okay, I think? I don’t know. I never _feel_ like you are, so no, I don’t think you’re stupid” and he hugs her tightly in gratitude. It’s easy to believe Nina when she tells him things: she always makes this squinty concentrating face for a while before she answers, and explains the reasons why she think things, so he knows she really means what she says instead of just saying whatever.

***

“So how was school?” Pai asks, as Usnavi dumps his backpack on his bed and flops facedown next to it.

“Mmnnnrrghhhh,” Usnavi says into his quilt, which doesn’t answer the question but definitely expresses his outlook on life right now. It’s Friday. He doesn’t wanna think about school any more.He wants to be left alone and then tomorrow he wants to go see Sonny because Sonny doesn’t care if Usnavi’s weird and can’t do long division, since Sonny’s also weird and can’t do long division due to being literally a baby. 

“Are you okay?”

“Fine.”

His room’s too small for Pai to come in and hug him unless he gets right up on the bed proper, so he leans over to pat Usnavi on the arm instead. “Well. If you want to talk, I’m listening. We’ll be in the kitchen.”

Usnavi turns himself face-up after Pai leaves, tries to make his lists in his head of the people he knows and the things that they like, tries to revel the comfort of knowing them.It keeps morphing back into his behavior list. _Quiet feet, Usnavi, quiet hands, sit still._ He wants to kick his legs in the air but he isn't allowed to do that and even though nobody's here to see he feels like they might know. He doesn't want to get in trouble again.

“Mamá, verde, Pai, azul, Abuela, amarillo, Nina, verde, Dani, púrpura, Carla—Carla…”

He remembers most of his seven times table now, and that’s one of the difficult ones. He remembers quiet mouth, quiet hands, quiet feet. But he doesn’t remember what Carla’s favorite color is.

“Carla, azul,” he tries, then “Carla, naranja?” and neither sound right.  He should remember. He needs to remember. There isn't space in his head for people any more, they’ve all been crowded out, or even any space for Usnavi. He’s a skipping needle on a scratched record.

What have they _done_ to him?!

He hurtles out of his room and slams into the kitchen where his parents are talking quietly.

“Usnavi?”

“Pai, I don’t like the blue room,” he says. “I don’t like it there.”

“Oh, mijo,” Pai says, kneeling down next to him. “¿Por qué no?"

“I don’t remember Carla’s favorite color any more,” he says. “I don’t remember what Nina’s favorite book is, or how to be friends with people, all I remember is _math_ and the _rules_. And they don’t let me move around or talk and it makes me feel bad, can I stop? I want to stop.”

“Usnavi,” Pai says, both hands on Usnavi’s shoulders reassuringly, “you remember the math because you’re _learning_ it. That’s a good thing, that’s why you’re in the resource room. I know there’s a lot to think about, and that being quiet can be very difficult, but everyone has to learn these things sometime.”

“But…but I don’t _like_ it,” he says, tearfully. “They keep tellin' me to sit still. They keep telling me to sit still and sitting still makes everythin' itch and then they write it on the report cards and say I can’t go play with Benny at recess and they make me go sit on my own, so you gotta make them put me in my proper classes again, you have to, please, por favor.”

“I’m sorry, Usnavi,” Mamá says gently. “It’s not forever.”

“I still have to go back?” he says, standing in the middle of the kitchen with all his hope crashing down around him. He thought they’d understand. “You’re makin' me go back?”

“It will be okay, mijo,” Pai says. “I know it’s not very fun, but you must trust us.”

Usnavi always has trusted his parents implicitly. Mamá told him to come to her if people were making him do things he didn’t want to do. Pai said he would listen.

_Trust us_ is the kind of thing people say just before you fall out of a tree, and they don’t help you afterwards.

They _lied_ to him.

***

He asks Vanessa when she comes into the store, by herself again.

“I think _everyone_ is stupid,” she says. “But you’re okay, I guess.”

He can live with that.

***

Usnavi’s parents ask him how his day went and he says “it sucked”, because he’s not a liar even if they are. They exchange a glance.

“Stop Lookin’ at each other about me,” he says irritably. “I can tell you’re both Lookin’ at each other about me like I can’t even tell you are but I can tell you are so stop it.”

“Sorry, pequeño, I will make sure not to look at your mother ever again.” Pai sighs. “It’s a shame. She’s very beautiful.”

“Ha ha.”

“Do you want to call Benny to come play?” Mama asks. “He can stay for dinner.”

“No _."_

“Well…do you have homework? Do you need any help?”

“I can do it myself.”

Usnavi always has homework. It’s more than a boy should have to bear. And he probably does need help with it but he’s just sick of everyone being so damn involved with his academic inadequacies, which is why he’s taken to doing his homework on the fire escape alone.

Some days Pai comes out and if Usnavi’s getting too sad he’ll fold paper airplanes and throw them off the railings to cheer him up. Some days Mamá comes out and brings him a half-cup of coffee in his favorite red cup. She says it’s to cool him down in this heat, which makes no sense because coffee is hot, but he doesn’t question it because he likes when he’s allowed to drink coffee.  It makes him feel tangled up and knotted inside, to still love his parents so much and revel in their kindness and be comforted by their presence even though he can’t trust them any more. _Do you need any help_? Ha.

Ay, if only he was a little kid again, like so long ago in third grade when life was so carefree. Used to be that Usnavi would do something wrong and he’d say “but everyone would be happier if they thought more like me and stopped worrying about school anyway”. Now he’s an ancient, wise fourth grader he’s started trying to think more like everyone else, and it’s miserable.  Third grade Usnavi had the right of it. What’s so important about school anyway that it means he has to do this? What’s so wrong with just being Usnavi, even if Usnavi is sometimes spelled with the S facing backwards on accident?

Apparently just being Usnavi is not enough: now Usnavi also has to be a lot of other things too, like ADHD and Dysgraphia and Learning Difficulties. Which, fine, the last one he coulda told anyone himself, learning is _very_ difficult, but they say it in a certain way that he don't want to mean himself.

Usnavi has plenty of words for who he is already. There’s sometimes mean ones that other people use about him or his family or people who look like them. But there’s the ones he likes and uses for himself: latino. Dominican. American. New Yorker. De la Vega. What he likes about these words is they all mean: we’re part of the same thing. They mean his flag, his languages, sharing recipes that have been going on for generations, all the adults arguing about which of their individual abuelas used to make it best even though there’s no way to know for sure. It means the names on the signs above the barrio’s businesses all in a row. His island, his ocean, the real one back home not the mural. Sitting on Abuela Claudia’s stoop with Nina helping to feed the birds, playing with Benny, holding his baby cousin. Whichever words they use, somewhere there’s a combination that means _we belong to each other, Usnavi belongs to us._

Nobody else he knows shares the new words they use for Usnavi, and nobody ever gave him a choice about using them, and they never seem to mean anything good. They just mean everyone making decisions for him and talking over him like he’s too dumb to understand or have an opinion just because he forgets to hear sometimes. They mean the other words that go along with it:  _delayed_ and  _misbehaving_ and  _wrong_ _._  “This is what’s wrong with him”, Mrs Carson will say to his parents as if he’s not even in the room, “this is how we can make him behave normally”. They give him a word for himself and tell him they need to get rid of that part of him in the same breath.  It makes him _different_.

Different is fine if there’s someone to be different the same as you, even if the whole rest of the world is against you. But nobody’s over here singing songs about how great it is to be ADHD or waving a flag with him, so Usnavi doesn’t want it.  Now if only he could figure out a way to make everyone else stop wanting to put it on him.

***

He asks Camila and Kevin, and Kevin says “it isn't about being smart, it’s about how hard you work.”

“I do work hard,” Usnavi says. “I still ain’t ever gonna get grades like Nina.”

Camila and Kevin don’t Look at each other, but Usnavi can feel the general presence of a Look hanging in the air anyway.

“Well, not everyone can and that’s alright,” Camila says. “Your mami told us how well you’ve been doing, that’s the important thing. We’re proud of Nina because of all the effort she puts in, not because of the grades she gets. And that’s what your parents feel about you, Usnavi.”

“Sure,” he says, doubtful.

“¡Es cierto! I’d hire you at the dispatch in a _snap,”_ Kevin says, snapping his fingers to emphasize. “I need more drivers with an attitude like yours, not like these perezosos I’m working with now.”

“I can’t drive,” Usnavi points out but he feels better. Maybe he can just stop going to school altogether and drive a taxi instead. When he’s a little bit older, obviously: he sits in the driver’s seat of some of the cabs while they’re parked, sometimes, if the drivers are talking to his parents, and he can’t see over the wheel or reach the pedals yet, but one day he’ll be even taller than Benny and then he’ll probably be the best driver _ever._

“I’ll teach you when you’re old enough,” Kevin promises.

***

Usnavi comes home with four out of five smiley faces stamped on his daily report card, his highest ever yet. His parents are delighted. He feels good that he did something right, and also like he doesn’t really want them to be this happy about getting four stamps because he hated the process of getting them and now they’re gonna have expectations.  Is that what it’s like to be Nina? You get good marks one time and then the rest of your life you know everyone’s expecting you to do it forever? He’s exhausted just from one day. He tells his parents he’s going to do his homework on the fire escape, though he has no intention of actually working.

Outside, the city surrounding him sinks into his skin, ambient noise that structures and directs his thoughts to the places they want to rest, like Kevin directing cars to avoid traffic from the dispatch. Usnavi closes his eyes, listens to the roar of the streets spanning out around him, beeping cabs and shouting and distant sirens, Piragüero singing happily in the street below. Nobody ever makes Piragüero stop singing just because it isn't appropriate behavior.

Checking first to make sure it’s just him here, Usnavi puts his hands in the air, with wiggling fingers, then drums them on his knees. Scrapes his teeth across his arm, tears up paper and kicks his feet and makes beatbox noises as much as he wants, all the things he’s been keeping on lockdown all day to earn his stamps.

Under his loud feet and the city sounds and through the kitchen window he can hear voices, tight with the treble shiver of anger and trying so hard to be quiet that it draws his attention. Usnavi’s stomach twists and he stills to listen in. It’s an argument. He crawls across the fire escape catlike, lies flat on the floor under the window so he can be close enough to hear without them seeing that he’s eavesdropping

“— almost three months and he’s still biting himself,” Pai is saying. “I thought we’d put an end to that habit years ago and now it’s back. I don’t like seeing my son hurting himself, Rosa.”

“And you think I _do_?!” Mamá says. “What do you expect me to do, Mateo?I’m trying, we’re doing everything she tells us, but she’s the expert here, not me.”

“They’re just trying to keep him out of the way in that classroom, if you ask me. He isn't _happy,_ everyone can see it, even Kevin’s come to talk to me about it. If we took him to a real doctor—“

“You _know_ we can’t. It’s too much money. I wish we could too, but this is the best we can offer him right now.”

“Lo sé, lo sé,” he sighs, and the next part sounds muffled like he’s covering his mouth “I just wish it was more. I wish I could provide better for him. For both of you.”

“Ay, don’t blame yourself.” The argument goes out of Mamá’s voice. “We’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got, just like we always have. We’re always okay in the end. Usnavi will be too."

Pai says something too quiet to hear.

“Querido, I know,” Mamá answers, “but it must be doing something. He’s been doing so well on his reports, and they say he’s catching up with his english and his math, he behaves so much better in class. It’s _working._ Maybe he just needs more time to get used to it.”

“Quizás,” Pai says. 

Usnavi rolls onto his back, staring up through the gridwork of fire escapes extending upward to the sky.  More time, she says, more time, he's going to be there forever until he isn't himself at all. They said it’s working. They _want_ him to be normal instead of whatever he is. He’s too much money. He’s too much work. He’s too much and not enough all at the same time, just wrong at all angles.

The next day Usnavi comes home with no smiley face stamps whatsoever, and with three new sets of double-semicircles in his arm, ridged little patterns in purpley-blue that almost broke the skin, the line interrupted along the bottom in the spaces where his adult teeth haven’t grown in to fill gaps yet.

***

He asks Dani and she says “no, chiquito, you’re muy inteligente. And so _handsome_ with your new haircut, everyone feast your eyes on _this_  dapper young caballero.” She spins his chair so everyone in the salon can see and they all coo over him. Usnavi beams, so thrilled at being the center of their attention that he forgets why he even asked Dani the question in the first place.

Dani adds, “pero you know who _could_ use another half a braincell to save for a rainy day is Kemal, you know, from the electronics place on 176th? Apparently he got a tattoo of Priscila’s face on his arm to try and win her back, that idiota.”

“No me diga,” Usnavi and Carla gasp simultaneously.

“Mmmmhm,” Dani says. “It did _not_ work, I can tell you. Priscila says it looks more like a chihuahua in a ponytail and lipstick. Personalmente I think that’s a vast improvement from the real thing anyway, but you didn’t hear me say it."

He asks Carla, too, as she’s taking him to Abuela’s afterwards, and she stops in the middle of the sidewalk, crouching down to his height and looking unusually serious. “Why d’you keep askin' people that? Camila says you asked her the other day, Nina too, and now Dani, and me.”

“Because…” he says, sudden heavy tears sticking behind his eyes and in his chest. “Because I am stupid. Everyone I asked says I ain't but I know they’re lyin', I _am_ , and, and what if I can’t ever figure out how to not be?”

“Well, so what if you are?” she says, which is so unexpected that it stops the impending tempest of Usnavi’s emotions right in its tracks. “So am I, but I don’t care. I’m happy bein' me even if the me I am ain’t clever, ¿ya sabes?”

“You ain’t stupid, though,” Usnavi objects. “You’re just silly sometimes.”

“Same difference. I never understand people’s jokes, Dani has to explain stuff to me all the time, I know people do that thing where I say somethin' and they look at each other like they’re laughin' about it even though it wasn’t supposed to be funny. They think I don’t know ‘cause I don’t say nothin', but I do know, it’s just that it don’t _matter_ , Usnavi.“

He knows that look she’s talking about. It’s tied first place with the This Is A Problem look for Looks People Do About Usnavi. 

“It don’t matter _?”_ he repeats. This is a brand new perspective on the situation.

“Nope, para nada,” she says. “You know what I think?”

“¿Qué?”

“I think,” she says, “that you should ask your Abuela that question, see what she has to say about it. And I _also_ think we should both get piragua before I take you home. What do you think?”

Usnavi thinks Carla is probably the smartest person _ever_.

***

“Abuela, am I stupid?” he asks, on Carla’s advice.  He hasn’t asked his parents. They’d probably say no, but they also say things like “you’re not in trouble” or “it’s going to be okay” or “yes of course Santa is real” so why even bother.

Abuela doesn’t say any of those things. She just sits down on the couch beside him, and looks at him very closely, and says, “you kids sometimes use words in strange ways, so perhaps you should explain to me what exactly you mean.”

“I can’t write good,” he says. “My letters go wrong. And I get in trouble and math is difficult, everything’s just difficult. I can’t even _write,_ even little kids can do that! And they put me in the special ed class and I keep getting bad marks on my behaviour card, so I must be.”

“Well then,” Abuela says slowly, “perhaps you must be.”

Usnavi flinches. He thought so.

“If being able to write is what makes someone smart, and you can’t write, then of course you must be stupid,” she continues, and Usnavi’s eyes sting with tears. “So of course anyone who can’t write must be stupid. Like your baby cousin, un muy chico estúpido, ¿sí?"

“Abuela!” Usnavi says, affronted. Usnavi is absolutely certain of two things: one, that he won’t allow a single bad word said against Sonny ever and two, that Sonny is definitely going to be a genius of the highest calibre. “He’s only a _baby_. That’s different. Babies ain’t even s’posed to be able to write yet.”

“Hm. then what about toddlers? If I remember rightly, our Nina sent some _very_ messy scribbles in my Christmas cards when she was four. Not as smart as we thought, quizás? She has been tricking us all this time?”

“Four is still a baby really,” Usnavi argues. “It’s…when you’re old enough to do it but you still can’t, that’s when.”

“And what age is that?”

Usnavi doesn’t actually know. “Eight,” he says decisively, because after that is when everyone started having issues with him.

“If you can’t write properly by eight?” Abuela says, and Usnavi nods. “And you’re nine, yes, I see the problem now. Well, then your old abuela must be stupid too. I’m sad that you think this, mijo.”

“No, Abuela!” She does look sad, too, which isn’t what Usnavi wanted to happen. “No! I don’t think that at all.”

“I am not good at writing. Sometimes even my own name I make mistakes with. And I am much older than eight. Vaya, vaya, what a thing to find out at my time of life.”

“You know all the _important_ things,” Usnavi insists, desperately. “You know how to make the best hot chocolate and you knew how to fix my busted knees that time I fell off the skateboard and you always know how to make babies stop cryin', and how to find which fruit is freshest at the grocery store, and how to give the best hugs.”

“So you must have failed hot chocolate making class. Or did you get an F in your baby-holding class?”

“Don’t make fun of me,” Usnavi says, frowning. “I was bein' serious.”

“I’m being serious too,” Abuela says. “If you think these are important things, and that I can’t be stupid because I know these things even though schools don’t have classes in them, why are you only judging yourself on what you have classes in?”

“…¿Qué?”

“Have they ever given you a test on how well _you_ give hugs, Usnavi? We all know how good you are at that. Have they ever given you a test on how kind you are to your friends, or how good you are at remembering so many different songs so perfectly?”

“No,” Usnavi says, and is suddenly so outraged by this oversight in the education system that he pounds a fist on his knee, which actually kinda hurts but sometimes that’s the price of epiphany. “No! They _never_ have! And I’m real good at that stuff.”

“At all the stuff that makes you you,” she confirms. “And that’s what we all love about you. Remember what I said? Don’t listen to your brain, or your teachers. Listen here.”

She taps him on the chest.

“I know,” he says, “but when I listen to that, it just _hurts_. If that’s all what people love about me how come Mama and Pai only care about me doin' good in school? Even though I told them how I don’t wanna go back no more, but Abuela, why ain’t they just love me how I am too?”

“They do,” she says, surprised. “More than anything. You do believe me, don’t you?”

He shrugs.

“Ya veo,” she says. “Do you at least believe that _I_ still love you, mijito?”

“Sí, Abuela,” he says, and crawls to curl up in her lap even though he’s getting too big now _._ “I always believe _that_.”

***

The burden of being nine years old is that you’re a backseat passenger on your own journey and no matter what you do or say or want there’s a grownup in the driver’s seat who has all the power to say _yes_ or _no_ or _it’s for your own good._ A tourist in the midst of their first experience of a New York City cab ride would probably heavily relate with how this might make a person feel.

Usnavi has decided it’s time to take the wheel. Desperate times, and all that.

He’s going to live with Abuela.

It’s so simple. No, it’s not just simple, it’s _genius._ She won’t make him go to the blue room. His parents can go off and have some other kid who suits them more. He can be Usnavi the way Usnavi wants to be, not the way he keeps being told to be. And he can feed the birds every day with Abuela instead of having to do homework. Perfecto.

_Who’s the smart one now?_ he thinks victoriously.

How to follow through on that plan, though. He could just ask his parents, of course, but what if it’s like when he asked them to let him leave the blue room? Can’t chance it on a no. So instead, when they come round to collect him later, he waits until everyone’s finished their coffee and during that prolonged moment of pre-goodbye it’s-getting-lateing he slips off to the bathroom and locks the door behind him.

Now it’s just a matter of waiting. 

And waiting.

There isn't a lot to do in a bathroom, Usnavi realizes, when you aren’t using it for bathrooming. But his will is strong, even stronger than boredom, even stronger than the anticipatory anxiety bubbling in his blood. He unravels a toilet roll halfway then re-ravels it to pass the time.

Waiting waiting _dios_ , he’s been in here for _years_ , have they forgotten he exists? Why haven’t they come to —

“Pequeño, are you okay in there? Time to go.” It’s Mamá. Okay. Time to reveal his plan.

“No, I live here now,” he calls back.

“In the bathroom?” Pai asks, then says something quietly. There’s laughter outside the door. Are they laughing at _him_?! When his plans are so clever and important?

“No! With Abuela!”

“Does Abuela know?”

“She does now,” Abuela says. 

There’s more giggling from his parents outside and his face burns red. He’s listening to his heart and that’s burning too: they’re not taking him seriously. “Stop laughing! It ain’t funny, I don’t wanna go back with you, I don’t wanna go back to school not _ever_ again, I’m stayin' here with Abuela and it ain’t funny so stop _laughin' at me!”_

He slams his palms against the door, and the sound is loud like he always wants to be and isn’t supposed to be, so he does it again as hard as he can, again, then with his fists, his shoulder —

_“_ Usnavi,” Mamá says urgently, not laughing now. “Usnavi, stop that, you’re going to hurt yourself. I’m sorry we laughed. Abre la puerta, por favor, lo sentimos.”

“You ain't sorry,” he shouts, voice crackly with tears, shoulder to the door again. Loud hands. Loud hands. Loud _everything_.

“Mateo, can’t you do something?”

“Like what, kick it down with him behind it? Chiquito, càlmate, let us in.”

“It would seem to _me_ ,” Abuela says to apparently nobody but with such an important tone that it even stops Usnavi’s noise so he can listen, “that if I had to listen to people telling me that I am doing everything wrong every day even after I told them it upset me, I would probably want to stay in el baño and hit things too.”

“Qué? No, that isn't what’s been happening,” Mama says. “We know he doesn’t like the resource room but no kid likes having to sit still. It isn't that we’re telling him that he’s doing things wrong, not at all, we’re just trying to help him.”

“Ah, well, obviously you know more than me,” Abuela says cheerfully. “So should I make up his bed on the sofa, or are we just going to let him live in the bathroom until he’s old enough to move out?”

“Claudia, you’re really not helping!”

“Not helping _you_ , maybe,” Abuela says severely. Usnavi winces sympathetically: he might be mad at his mamá, but it’s no joke being in the firing line when Abuela sounds like that. “You’re not so old that you’re wiser than me yet, Rosa De la Vega, and since your son is the one who’s locked himself in a bathroom because he’s scared of school and he thinks his parents don’t love him any more, I’m not going to take any attitude from you about this.”

There’s a long silence.

“What?” Pai says, quiet.

“He doesn’t think that,” Mamá says. “Does he?”

“I’m not the one you should be asking. He’s tried to talk to you about this already. Perhaps you should try listening.”

“Usnavi,” Mamá says. “¿En serio crees eso? Why would you think we don’t love you?”

“Because you _don’t_ ,” he says, unlocking the door. They’re all staring at him. Both his parents kneel to his height, but he walks right past them to stand close at Abuela’s side because she understands why he’s doing this and she'll let him stay with her. The buckle on Abuela’s watch is shiny smooth silver metal: he plays his fingers across it and watches the way they reflect.  “You want me to be some kid like Nina instead who’s smart and don’t make trouble, that's why you keep makin' me go back there. You don’t even care about me or what I want.”

“Of course we care,” Pai says. “Of course we do.”

“You don’t!” Usnavi stamps his foot. “I _told_ you I hate the blue room, I hate it and I hate being told off always just for bein' me and the reports and always being told I need fixin' or my hands are too loud, and I’m just _sad_ all the time and Mamá says how if an adult’s tryna make me do somethin' that makes me feel bad or go someplace I don’t want to then I’m supposed to tell.” He wipes his eyes. “And I did tell, and you didn’t _listen_."

“Mijo, but that isn't really what I meant by—“ Mamá stops herself, and sits backwards so she’s on the ground proper instead of kneeling. “Oh. Pues…oh.”

Pai sits next to her, rubbing his chin with a rueful grimace. “I keep telling you, Rosa, the boy should be in politics the way he can argue.”

“He’s far too honest for that,” she says, sounding distracted. “But he needs the extra support, that’s why he goes to the resource room in the first place.”

Ay, they’re going to do it again, just like he knew they would. The instant slamming sick feeling that means _school_ and _stupid_ and tests, words, warnings, notes in books, the dumb ocean mural, his hands on the table in a suffocating stillness _._ Usnavi clutches at Abuela. “No! Please, I don’t _like_ it there _,_ Abuela, tell her!”

Abuela makes a comforting shushing noise and strokes his hair with the hand he doesn’t have an iron grip on.

“Rosa,” she says. “Is this really how you want to help him?”

“He does have a point,” Pai says gently. Usnavi’s heart jumps hopeful: it’s the first time in a long time he’s heard him say that. “And so does Claudia. Look at him, querida, this isn’t right. If it’s a choice between Usnavi’s grades and his happiness…”

Mamá rubs her forehead like she's getting a headache. “We can’t just go back to how it was before either, he was stressed then too. But no, this isn’t... I don’t want you to be unhappy, Usnavi, that isn't what this was supposed to be about. Do you really hate it that much?"

He nods miserably.

"Alright," she says. "Alright. I’ll talk to the school on Monday.”

“Really?” he asks, wary. “What if they say I can’t go back to Miss Marsh’s class, though?"

“If I have to sit in class with you and help you myself to make it happen then I will,” she says. “And whatever we do next we make sure you’re okay with it too.”

A sensation like a bubble popping: they listened to him. It worked.

“ _Mamá_!” he shouts, flings himself over to hug her. “Gracias, gracias, gracias!”

She holds tight, the tightest hug he’s ever had, the kind that makes him feel safe and solid in his own skin.“Lo siento,” she says, and her voice sounds funny. “Lo siento mucho, we should have listened, I didn’t understand, I didn't mean to make you feel this way. We do love you, so much, siempre te queremos.”

Oh, she’s _crying_. Mamá never cries.

Pai leans over, hand on Usnavi’s arm. He isn’t crying, but he looks very sad. “We’ll make things right, te lo prometo. Will you come home? Abuela’s place is very nice, but we would miss our little one if he left us.”

Usnavi considers holding out just to show them how it feels, and lasts for all of half a second: he loves his parents, and they did apologize. Even Benny accidentally made Usnavi break his wrist once. People make mistakes, he does too, all the time. Grudges aren’t his style. But he’s no chump either, he ain't going to negotiate on the terms and conditions.

“Even if I’m loud and I fidget and all?” he says. “I'm tired of tryin' not to, I ain’t comin’ back if I can’t do that.”

“It would be much too quiet if you stopped, mijo.”

“Okay then,” Usnavi says, and he doesn’t feel better, entirely, but he also doesn’t feel like someone’s got their hand clenched around his heart any more. “Okay then. I’ll come home.”

“Qué lástime,” Abuela says. “I was looking forward to having you live on my couch, and making you do all the cooking and cleaning for me.”

“No, Abuela! I woulda watched cartoons and you’d make me breakfast, like we do on Saturdays.”

Mamá says, “if we hadn’t changed our minds, you really would have let him live on your couch, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course I would,” she says, his abuela who knows how to fix everything, every time. “I always have a space for my Usnavi.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings:  
> \- usnavi has a bad time in special ed, because they prioritize making his behaviour appear more neurotypical over his emotional state/comfort (discouraging him from stimming, etc). it takes his parents a little while to catch on to how he's feeling about it & change things, but they're just misguided/underinformed.
> 
> \- he stims by biting himself when he’s stressed, same as chapter 1.
> 
> \- hella internalized ableism
> 
> i did end this relatively positive but i’m sorry if it doesn’t feel as resolved as perhaps it could. like i said last chapter, this is backstory for some stuff in my DNH/ITH verse, where Usnavi as an adult is very wary about anything surrounding labels/support/therapy, so in himself he doesn't really resolve it so much as avoid dealing with that aspect of his identity as much as possible until he's older, but he’s def coming to a much more self-accepting place about his own neurodiversity as a grownup.

**Author's Note:**

>    
> [please leave a comment if you liked it! i'm also on [tumblr!](https://thisstableground.tumblr.com/)]


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